Outage Knocks Out Power At Main SF Banks

The downtown Sioux Falls power outage affected hundreds of businesses downtown on Friday, including four of the biggest banks in the state, which all have main branches in the heart of the nine block area where crews are working.

"I came down here and opened the doors and they wouldn't open," Wells Fargo customer Cashi Maria Stroud said.

The downtown power outage shut down Wells Fargo for the day which surprised some customers who were hoping to do business.

"A big surprise, of all the banks this is the main branch. I am surprised. I'm very much surprised," Stroud said.

It wasn’t just the main bank branches that were shut down in downtown Sioux Falls; ATM’s were out of service because of the power outage.

The First Dakota National Bank and U.S. Bank were both closed because of the outage.

The only financial services building showing any signs of life on Friday was the First National Bank. Its drive-thru and express bank is being run off a generator.

"This is the first real incident where we've had to go into an implementation that's this full scale," First National Bank President Bill Baker said.

The First National express bank opened at its normal time on Friday and it will still be open Saturday even though the power likely won't be on. Baker says they have a generator just to serve customers in times like this.

"It may last for a while and we're going to be business as usual. We'll be taking care of our customers," Baker said.

The main branch is still without power but employees are working in the dark. First National Bank is glad its plan is working even as crews work to fix the problem that's knocked out power to hundreds right outside its door.

"We've had a plan for years and we test regularly and the plan is paying off," Baker said.